


Once upon a time

by julad



Category: Numb3rs
Genre: M/M, case-related disturbing themes, road love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 07:01:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1103858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julad/pseuds/julad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He got through high school, he got through college, he got through two seasons of pro baseball and then Quantico and the first exhausting year in the field, and then he met Billy Cooper and got laid so spectacularly that it turned his whole world upside down. It was like Billy held him up by the ankles and shook him until all the loose change fell out of his pockets and all the stupid crap fell out of his psyche.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once upon a time

**Author's Note:**

> A while back, I stayed up half the night writing this, after catching a rerun of Man Hunt and being once more amazed at Don and Billy and their Incredible Manly Ex-Boyfriendly Love. I couldn't quite get the story how I wanted, though, and finally gave up, but I guess posting is better than sitting on my hard drive. I hope, anyway! 
> 
> For josselin, who got me watching, and thanks as usual to Ces, Mia, and Terri for their excellent advice that I didn't always take. (Um, and hello Numb3rs people! I adore the show, but I've had too much RL to come over and play. *waves*)

He got through high school, he got through college, he got through two seasons of pro baseball and then Quantico and the first exhausting year in the field, and then he met Billy Cooper and got laid so spectacularly that it turned his whole world upside down. It was like Billy held him up by the ankles and shook him until all the loose change fell out of his pockets and all the stupid crap fell out of his psyche.

"I don't care about your stupid brother, shut up already," Billy said, less than 24 hours after the night they met. They'd gone for burgers and shakes at four in the afternoon, starving because their training seminar had only offered little white-bread sandwiches at lunch. Billy always ordered strawberry milkshakes with extra ice-cream, and Don always remembered watching him suck pink milk through a straw. Billy didn't give a fuck about other people's issues, including any issues they might have with him.

Don, reeling from sex and hunger and crime data trends, took this as a revelation. He could refuse to give a fuck. He could get spectacularly laid by Billy and have a genius brother and come face to face with the dirtiest scum on the streets and it didn't have to touch him if he didn't want it to.

Billy smoked, back then-- Marlboro reds. "I'd quit," he used to say, "but then I couldn't smoke any more." Don could never get into smoking. Billy whacked him over the head when he tried. "Dumbass, don't do it if you don't like it," Billy said, and another piece of stupid got knocked out of Don's brain.

The first time they worked together, they solved the case in twenty-three minutes. It was ninety percent luck-- going around the corner to read the case over eggs and coffee, plus Billy nudging him and saying, "does that look like the guy?" and Don still being fit enough to run through six lanes of morning traffic without getting killed. Still, it got them on another case together (solved in three days) and then another (seven weeks, but it had been open for five years.)

"Damn, we're good," Billy said, lying on Don's bed, smoking a cigarette. Don had just come hard enough to wipe his mind blank, gleamingly empty like a brand new whiteboard, and was still feeling aftershocks, tremors from his stomach to his thighs. He lay there on the twisted sheets and thought, _huh_. Maybe I _am_ good at this. He was a clean slate, and there was nothing on it but good. 'Raw, but impressive,' his first AD had written on his first performance review. Lying beside Billy, coming down from hours of victorious fucking, Don couldn't remember why that had ever seemed negative.

Billy made things easy. "You're hot," he'd say, and, "Come here." Don would get himself all twisted up over whether Billy saw him as the weak one, whether Billy treated him like his lady, and then Billy would holler, "Don, get the fucking door, you lazy fucking fuck," as he juggled a sixpack and pizza. Don would yell at Billy to go fuck himself, and then spring up to unlock the motel room door for him, some unnecessary tightness in his chest dissolving.

Once, when Don quoted some long-ago memorised statistic, Billy said, "I like it when you get all brainy." Even though Don was careful never to recite math again, he was secretly thrilled. Occasionally-- not often, but sometimes-- he bought books on history and politics, and read them on boring stakeouts. Billy didn't give a fuck about the Korean War or the California Gold Rush, and he'd snatch the book from Don's fingers and throw it into the backseat when Don wouldn't give him his full attention. They both liked that.

Life on the road was wild and Don loved it. _Billy_ loved it, and that was enough for Don. Don chafed at red tape when Billy chafed, and was sick of the legal wrangles over procedure because it drove Billy up the wall. But it was more than that. It was freedom and righteousness and his boot on the pedal of a rented Chevy. It was standing beside Billy as Billy called a gap-tooth bottle-blonde hooker "ma'am" with no irony at all, and tipped his hat to her when she told them where Al McHenry might have been last night. Don criss-crossed America on black asphalt, captured thirty-seven men and six women, and killed four men, one woman, and three dogs. He learned to be a man out there, somewhere closer to Reno than LA, and closer to Billy's coarse gentility than his father's fussy etiquette.

He got used to Billy's rough affection, never too much and sometimes not enough, a brusque kiss on his forehead and a hand brushing the small of his back. Billy would sling an arm around Don's waist when it was cold, and when it was hot, he'd sleep on another bed. Sometimes, when Don was craving warm arms around him, he'd hear Billy's voice in his head-- "if there's something you want, nobody ever just hands it to you," -- and go over and hold Billy tight. "Mm, this is nice," Billy would say, and squeeze Don hard, but he'd get restless after a few minutes.

In Russell, Kansas, after a long, desperate search, Don opened a basement refrigerator and found it full of tiny body parts, little girls' hands and feet all in a row. He spent the night in the shower, curled up in a wet corner, knowing he'd never see anything behind his eyelids but a shelf full of mottled purple doll heads that used to be alive. Billy spent the whole night chain-smoking on the hotel room balcony. Don thought he'd never forgive him for that, but in the morning, when they had to go back for more evidence, Billy knelt down in front of the refrigerator, put his hands together, and wept.

They were together for three years, and from the start Billy knew exactly what touches would make Don's body arch up and his eyes roll back in his head. Don's hands got to know Billy's body like they knew his own. Most of the time, they had sex with maximum efficiency-- fifteen minutes to a fierce, harsh climax and then get what sleep they had time for when they were two days from the border and their prey was still half a day ahead of them. They only fooled around when the chase was over, high on victory and wired on caffeine, tired, hungry, giddy and smug. They'd stay an extra day in the hotel to tie up loose ends, and get as down and dirty as they knew how.

Don loved that Billy laughed the first time he saw a photo of Charlie, with his big nose and button-down shirt. Billy barked harsh and loud, and then tried to cover it, because he respected Don's family. He chatted politely to Don's mother on the phone, and called Don's father "Sir."

Billy's Dad had been in 'Nam, and that was all Don ever knew. Family was important, Billy would tell him, and he'd mean it, but he never once called a mother or a sister while they were on the road. Don asked once, and Billy said, " _Don't._ " He said it so sharply that Don never asked again.

Don spent a week in LA for his parents' thirtieth wedding anniversary, mostly because taking time off in November meant he could spend another Christmas at work with Billy. They both hated Christmas, but Billy wasn't Jewish, so they couldn't have hated it for the same reasons.

As soon as he breathed the dry air outside LAX, Don missed Billy like hell. He called him from a pay phone, but Billy said, "Hey, don't waste your time talking to me. Go hang out with your family." Don called him again two days later, and Billy maybe missed him a little too, because they talked about the latest sports scores and the latest plea bargains for a couple of minutes. Don leaned into the wall and smiled into the phone, feeling the steel band around his chest ease, and casually asked Billy to come out for a few days. "We can hit a few clubs, hike, whatever you want," he said. His heart was beating against his ribs. He didn't say, let me introduce you to my parents, because they'd already met, and because he didn't know what he'd introduce Billy as, if not as his work partner. But he wanted Billy by his side.

"Nah," Billy said, "I'll see you when you're back." He left Don listening to the dial tone.

When Don finally looked up, his father was leaning in the hallway, watching him. "Dinner's ready," he said, after the kind of pause that meant he was planning to say something else.

As usual, his parents were proud of Charlie and worried about Don. Charlie was on tenure-track at CalSci, and still a self-centred brat who had to have everything his way, but Don felt an invisible whack over his head whenever it started to bother him. Charlie had big brains and a big mouth, but he was just a tiny, dumb kid.

Don's father still fussed in his half-annoyed way, wanting to know when Don was moving back to LA, when he was going to settle down, maybe get married, or maybe he'd already met somebody, hm? Don ignored the hints as pointedly as his father dropped them.

His mother still watched him calmly, saying nothing until she said the one thing he was dreading and hoping for.

"Don," she said gently, his last night there, "you don't seem happy."

"I am," he opened his mouth to tell her, and then he stopped, because he wasn't sure how true that was. "I get lonely," he nearly said. "I'm fine," he ended up telling her. "I just work too hard."

He was too old to need his mother to hold him, but he'd been on the road with Billy for so long. He needed to be held by somebody. He didn't ask.

He couldn't arrange his life around spending a holiday he hated with a man who hated it too, and not be in love with him. He couldn't love his family and not give a fuck that they worried about him. He couldn't bring Billy home to reassure his family that he was cared for, because he'd already asked, and Billy said no. He couldn't come home from a hunting trip and be satisfied, because riding shotgun next to Billy was the closest thing he had to a home.

Life on the road wasn't the same after that. The miles chafed, and so did the cheap sheets on the motel beds, and so did Billy's refusal to consider doing something else. They had their first and only shouting match about it. All the shouting was Don's, trying to get a response out of Billy, until he finally did.

"You think you have all the answers," Don yelled, "but you don't have to give a fuck when nobody gives a fuck about you!"

Billy turned on him like a wounded bear. "You're the only one who thinks I have answers," he snarled. "Maybe if you grew a spine of your own, you could try getting some answers of your own, too."

Don stormed out of the hotel room at that, and slammed the door behind him, but that was stupid, because they had a job to do. He turned around and walked back, grabbed his luggage, and threw it into the car. Jaw set, Billy followed.

"Look, sorry," Billy said later that evening, hoarser than usual. He was hunched down in a diner booth, staring out the window. "I said some shitty things."

"It's not your fault," Don admitted, burning with guilt. "I started it." Billy let Don hold him close all night that night, but the feeling of breaking apart was inescapable.

It was another month before Billy put his hands on Don's cheeks, kissed him on the mouth, and told him to apply for a transfer. Don told him that he loved him. Billy hugged him hard and said, "Yeah, dumbass, I know."

When Don left for New Mexico, Billy didn't come to his send-off. Don hadn't expected him to. He knew Billy, and he figured he'd had all the goodbyes he was going to get. But when Don got to the airport for his pre-dawn flight, there was Billy, sitting an orange chair by the gate. His eyes were red, and he looked beaten in the garish airport gloom.

"Hey," he said roughly, and waved Don to sit next to him. He threw an arm around Don's shoulders and pulled him close, and Don leaned into him, heartbroken and grateful. "You're a better man than me," Billy softly. "You remember that."

"Dumbass," Don told him, and whacked him over the back of the head, "you're full of shit."

Billy laughed hoarsely.

When Don's flight boarded, Billy walked him right up to the gate. He kissed Don behind his ear, held him close for a moment, and then let go. Don gripped his hand for a moment, and let go too.

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally posted to LiveJournal, September 2006](http://julad.livejournal.com/80112.html)


End file.
